


Merry's Mother

by rrosebudd



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Dell is the therapist friend for just one day, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, If you can't resolve emotional trauma in game, Panic Attacks, lord knows Zefi needs it, store bought is fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:33:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26237191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rrosebudd/pseuds/rrosebudd
Summary: Zefi's crew was killed. Four girls, all dear to her, murdered by the pirate gang she used to run with, and she doesn't know how to process. She's angry, bitter, cruel. As her party sets sail back home, Dell gets her alone and offers an ear. She breaks down.
Kudos: 2





	Merry's Mother

She sat on the red sand, staring down, as she couldn’t quite bring herself to look above her at the bodies that swung from the mast. 

While her remaining crew muttered to themselves by the shore, behind her, Zefi could hear Opal approach. 

The tabaxi paused just next to her former captain, hesitant. 

“Listen,” Opal’s raspy voice spoke up, uncertainty there. “If I had known—”

With a furious shout through her teeth, Zefi yanked her rapier from her belt, grasping the handle with white knuckles, before hurling the hilt in the tabaxi’s direction. 

Opal didn’t try to dodge. She let the rapier bounce off her shoulder armor, and looked away. 

Zefi’s breaths were shallow as she stared down the woman responsible for the deaths of her teammates, and it looked as though she might say something, but the fury couldn’t quite get past her sharp teeth. 

Goos broke away from the main party to look over at the commotion. His rough Australian accent butted in, “Maybe you should go.” He nodded in Opal’s direction, as Skits next to him looked just about ready to cut the tabaxi’s head off with a swift flick of her wand. 

Opal ground her feline molars, but nodded, and took a step backward toward the dense white forest. She turned on her heel and sprinted off. 

The party watched her go, though the goblin appeared tentative to let her off the hook so easily. But with Goos’ hand on her shoulder, Skits stayed put. 

There was another moment of silence before Zefi pulled herself to her feet. Skits breathed a sigh of relief as their captain pulled herself together, and piped up. 

“We should really get out of here. The dragon might come out here any second,” the goblin girl shot a glance to the volcano, and as though on cue, it began to rumble. 

Zefi looked over as well, and nodded. “Right,” she clapped her hands weakly, before moving through her party toward the ship. 

As it is merely nature to be magnetized to the macabre, Zefi’s eyes accidentally wandered back toward the mast, and she wanted to gag. She drew her attention away as quick as she could, but not before the images of her old crewmates with their throats slit and eyes gouged were bored into her head. 

An elf, a dragonborn, a tiefling, and a tabaxi child, all hung by their necks to the

wooden post. She had seen some sights in her days as a pirate, but the gore never got easier. 

“Can someone… use magic, or something. To get the bodies down, I don’t…” the captain spoke up, and her shoulders fell. “I don’t want to look at it anymore.” 

Five concerned pairs of eyes followed their captain as she boarded the ship. Skits cleared her throat. 

“Yeah, I got it,” she confirmed, following Zefi and approaching the blood-soaked center of the ship to Mage Hand the bodies off the mast and onto shore. 

The rest of the crew followed, Dell pulling up the anchor, and Goos making his way to the crow’s nest as they prepared their departure from the island. 

Zefi hovered by the ramp, standing numbly. She watched the rest of the party for a moment. 

“I’m going to need a new helmsman, so,” she called, her cockney voice much more monotonous than it usually was. “Figure it out amongst yourselves.”

More concerned glances, and she would have rolled her eyes if she had the energy in her. She headed toward the hull, running a hand down her face. 

“I…” Zefi began, tone flat, “am going to go nap. If anyone bothers me, I will personally be throwing you overboard.” 

She shouldered past Corvice on her way to the entrance to the underbelly, and as she passed by, he muttered.

“That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think,” he spoke quietly. 

But not quite soft enough for Zefi not to hear, as she spun toward him and coolly readied a fist behind her head. 

She didn’t get to make much of a move after that, however, as the strong hands of both a centaur and a triton were on her shoulders to hold her back. Vivin kept her back by her arm with a worried glare, while Dell’s calloused palm gripped Zefi’s collarbone.

“If you’re going, go,” Dell grunted, gently prying her away from the druid and pushing her in the direction of the cabin. 

Zefi narrowed her eyes at the centaur much taller than her, and she yanked her arm away from him, tugging herself back and heading down the stairs. “A’right,” she mumbled, her green face still tinged with the red of frustration. 

She all but slammed the door behind her as she headed to the lower deck, her short nails digging into her palms. She would wring Opal’s neck if she could, along with every other whore on that crew. But that would be more in line with the old her. And damn her obsession with the high road. 

She wasn’t going to sleep. She knew if she shut her eyes the only thing she saw would be the mast, again and again. So she instead passed by her bed in favor of heading to a table at the far end of the cabin. 

Slapping a whet stone into the wooden surface, she pulled out her dagger collection, and began sharpening. Anything to get lost in thought. 

There wasn’t more than a minute of silence until her sharp ears picked up the sound of footsteps. Or rather, obnoxiously loud hooves making their way down the stairs and into her quarters. 

She kept working, ignoring her crew member, though she could feel his presence in the doorway. 

“Never heard of knocking, have ya?” She growled from her spot in the corner. Her words were accompanied by a nice  _ shnk _ of the dagger as it was dragged across the stone. 

Dell paused, and Zefi could hear him exhale. He walked to the center of the room, the clopping of his horseshoes an odd sound on the floor of the ship. 

“I figured you could use some company,” the older man spoke up, his Southern accent palpable and, if the situation were different, comforting. 

“I‘m fine.” 

Her voice was curt. She drug her knife across the stone again. She clearly wasn’t, but she didn’t want to have that conversation. 

Dell sighed audibly, gruffly, and sat down on the bed in the center of the room. He let there be quiet for a moment, save for the sharpening sounds, but he broke it again. 

“Zefi,” his voice was solemn. “You’re not alone in this. Years ago, I lost my home, as well as my wife, and it—”

“Sounds great. I don’t need your pity,” she snapped, yanking the knife away from the whet stone a bit too hard. 

Dell’s blue eyes narrowed in her direction. “And I don’t need your tone. I’m tryin’ to help here.” 

“Well, I don’t need it.” She said matter-of-factly, grinding her front teeth. She put one knife away and took out another. 

It seemed Dell was now the one to gather his composure, as his tone shifted. “Alright. You don’t get to do that.” 

Zefi’s messy brow furrowed, and she looked to him at last. “Do what.” 

“Let this make you mean.” 

His face was stern, more than she’d seen it before, which was almost startling. She frowned. 

“You don’t get to be cruel just because it hurts, you get that? I’ve lost plenty, but you don’t see me turning into a monster and pushing people away.” He grunted, and folded his arms. “Now we’re gonna either sit here in silence, or talk about it. But being mean ain’t an option.” 

Zefi stood still, staring ahead at him, almost amazed at the audacity. She shook her head slowly, reluctant. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s fine by me.” He nodded and leaned back, calm restored. 

She paused, and nodded as well. She felt raw. 

She returned to her station at the table to sharpen another dagger, but her grip wasn’t as stable. Her work continued for a while, Dell observing her in the silence he promised. 

But after awhile the silence felt heavy, and her hands were shaky. 

“I know you guys knew them, like—” Zefi broke the quiet. “Just from sailing with them the last two months.”

She breathed. She wouldn’t cry. That’d be fucking stupid. “But you didn’t know them like I did.” She looked to Dell, if only to see if he had a response for her. He didn’t. 

She shook her head. “Whatever,” she muttered, more to herself than aloud. She got back to sharpening.

The silence didn’t last more than a second that time. Her thoughts pushed out of her mouth before she even realized. 

“Rora was one of my best friends,” she blurted, her grip on her dagger suddenly tight. “I met her a little while after things fell through with my old crew. We actually dated on and off for a couple years,” she spoke fast. The memories were too quick and too many to recant. 

“And, like, we fought a lot, since she was my right hand, but I,” she caught her breath. “I never… didn’t love and care about her, you know?” She paused her sharpening to look to her listener, who merely nodded sympathetically. 

“She knew they ship as well as I did, it was really impressive,” Zefi chuckled weakly, but it felt forced. “And… God, Fay was so, so wise. You guys, you saw, she’s quiet as hell. But she would observe things and study people and listen, it was like a superpower.” 

She shook her head, and put her knife down, catching her breath between another soft giggle. “Yarish was hilarious when you got to know her, and she was even more of a drunk than I am. She out-drank me every tavern we stopped at, I was honestly jealous.” 

Dell offered a chuckle of his own, seemingly encouraging the more positive memories of the crew, as they appeared to help. “And the tabaxi, she…?” He recalled her name.

“Merry,” Zefi finished, and then stopped. Her skin went a bit colder, and a darkness fell over her face. She forced a laugh. “Merry was sixteen. Skits’ age, I feel like they could have been friends. If they had more time, of course,” she exhaled. 

Dell’s tense demeanor had softened over the course of the conversation, and by now he looked purely solemn. Zefi stopped, hesitant to continue, but he nodded to her. She sighed. 

“She was just a kid, you know?” She wiped sweat from her brow with a shaky breath. “She was a kid who loved sailing so goddamn much. When she wanted to join my crew back on the Isles, she had to beg her mother to let her come with me,” she recalled the story, a mixture of fondness and phlegm in her throat as she spoke. 

The centaur cleared his throat. “Zefi, you don't have to—”

“The condition,” Zefi continued sharply, “was that I keep her safe. If she were to come with me, I had to keep her safe, and I…” 

She had to stop to catch her breath. She folded her arms and leaned against the far wall of the cabin. 

“You lost your wife?” She jerked her chin in Dell’s direction. 

He furrowed his large brow, about to nod. 

“So you must know as well as I that it doesn’t matter,” she scoffed, but it sounded weak, almost hysterical. “Friends, family, none of it matters, right? Because it goes away?” She goaded him, looking for answers on his rugged face. 

He watched her, words not seeming to form behind his lips as she talked, and just kept talking. 

“First my old crew, then my new one, so maybe everything just falls through, you know?” She chuckled, but her voice and body was unsteady. “Because now part of my family’s gone, and I get to be the lucky one to tell  _ their _ families they’re all dead, and— it’s—” 

Dell stood, as Zefi looked as though she might go down. 

“I—” she took a breath that sounded strained, and her face grew panicked.

“ _ What _ am I going to tell Merry’s mother?”

Her hand went over her mouth, and her breathing got faster, and weak, and while there were no tears, it sounded as though her throat might close anyway. 

Dell was in front of her in moments, his large hands going to her shoulders to keep her steady. “Alright,” his deep voice reassured. “Breathe.” 

“She-” Zefi gasped, but couldn’t quite find enough air. Her brown eyes were wide, panicked. 

“Breathe,” he repeated. He brought a hand down to her upper arm and squeezed slightly. “With me, in and out,” he instructed clearly.

They stood for several minutes, as she struggled to line up her heaving chest with his, the only sound her cracked inhales and the crew above deck going about their business. 

He let go of her arms after a long while, until she could stand on her own. “I’m sorry,” he offered, and stepped back. “I’ll leave you to get some rest. Are you going to be alright by yourself?” 

Zefi was steadier, only her fingertips trembling a bit, but she looked down, and nodded. 

Dell gave a sigh, and gave her some more space as he headed to the door. “It does matter, you know,” he nodded to her, before making his way toward the staircase.

She exhaled, and her response was reluctant. “I know.” 


End file.
